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      Kamala Harris to hold town hall with undecided voters after Donald Trump rejects second debate offer – US politics live

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      US vice-president Kamala Harris will hold a town hall with undecided voters on CNN on Wednesday, after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rejected an offer to debate the Democratic nominee for a second time, reports Reuters.Trump will headline a rally Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia with guests Tucker Carlson and Robert F Kennedy Jr, as the race for the White House counts down to less than two weeks.Pennsylvania and Georgia are among seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency. Both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns in those states, trying to persuade the small sliver of voters who are still undecided to back them in the 5 November election.Harris tried and failed to push Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was considered to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News.Reuters reports that Hariss’s televised town hall will take place before a live audience of undecided voters from Pennsylvania in Delaware County, outside Philadelphia.Harris held a marginal 46% to 43% lead over the former president, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.More on this story in a moment, but first, here are the latest updates:

      Surrogates campaigning for Trump and Harris are fanning out across the US this week. Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, will travel to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while Trump’s running mate JD Vance will head to Reno, Nevada on Wednesday.

      UK prime minister Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election. The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.

      Harris herself said she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, in an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. “I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”.

      Harris courted Hispanic voters promoting small business loans for Latino men, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said.

      Trump also pitched to Hispanic voters, holding a morning round table with Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Trump hit familiar talking points but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc. The event concluded with a group of prominent evangelists praying as they stood around Trump with their hands on his shoulders, while he sat with his eyes closed.

      At the same event, the former president hurled a series of personal attacks at his opponent, calling Harris “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”. He was referring to Harris holding no public campaign events on Tuesday, instead recording the two interviews after a busy day of campaigning with Liz Cheney on Monday. At a later rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump continued the invective: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”

      Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally with former president Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, where he slammed Trump’s staged campaign event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a “stunt” and mocked Elon Musk for “jumping around, skipping like a dipshit” before holding another rally in Wisconsin that evening.

      Obama, meanwhile, ridiculed Trump’s boasts on the economy and cast his rambling speeches as a sign of mental deterioration. “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”

      JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorisation of their status while campaigning in Peoria, outside Phoenix, Arizona. Vance urged supporters to “work our rear ends off for the next two weeks” to turn the swing state red.

      Despite some setbacks, Republicans vowed to press ahead in bids to block some overseas ballots. Court rulings rejected Republic National Committee efforts to block some Americans living abroad from voting in North Carolina and Michigan but the party will keep up its aggressive legal campaign.

      Arab Americans slightly favour Trump over Harris, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit along with YouGov, shows a deadlock in Michigan, a key battleground state with a large Arab American population.
      Barack Obama rapped Eminem’s signature hit Lose Yourself to a crowd in Detroit during a campaign rally for Kamala Harris.He was preceded by Eminem himself, who told the crowd in his home city:
      It’s important to use your voice, I’m encouraging everyone to get out and vote, please … I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of what people will do if you make your opinion known. I think vice-president Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld.”
      Obama opened his ensuing speech by saying: “I gotta say, I have done a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem,” before segueing into Lose Yourself’s opening lines: “I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting …”He joked that he thought Eminem would be performing and he would be a guest star, adding: “Love me some Eminem.”The former president is an avowed music fan, sharing his favourite songs twice a year in official posts on his social media. Summer 2024’s selections included songs by contemporary pop names such as Beyoncé, Tyla and Rema alongside older tracks by Nick Drake, the Supremes and cosmic jazz musician Pharoah Sanders.Obama went on to excoriate Donald Trump in his speech, recalling how Trump expressed doubt about the election results in 2020:
      Because Donald Trump was willing to spread lies about voter fraud in Michigan, protesters came down, banged on the windows, shouting, ‘Let us in. Stop the count.’ Poll workers inside being intimidated … all because Donald Trump couldn’t accept losing … there is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself.”
      He questioned Trump’s mental fitness for the role of president, saying:
      You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this. But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”
      Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election.The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.The letter, which was sent to the US Federal Election Commission, said that these volunteering efforts and reports of contact between Labour and the Harris campaign amounted to “illegal foreign national contributions”.A statement on DonaldJTrump.com on Tuesday night claimed that the “far-left” Labour party has “inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric”.In response Starmer insisted he had a “good relationship” with Trump which would not be jeopardised by the complaint.The prime minister said that party officials volunteering for Harris ahead of the US presidential election on 5 November were “doing it in their spare time” rather than in their capacity working for Labour.Speaking to reporters travelling with him to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, Starmer said:
      The Labour party … volunteers, have gone over pretty much every election. They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there.
      That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward.”
      Asked if the complaint risked jeopardising his relationship with Trump if he becomes president again, the UK prime minister said:
      No. I spent time in New York with President Trump, had dinner with him and my purpose in doing that was to make sure that between the two of us we established a good relationship, which we did, and we’re grateful for him for making the time.”
      We had a good, constructive discussion and, of course as prime minister of the United Kingdom I will work with whoever the American people return as their president in their elections which are very close now.”
      US vice-president Kamala Harris will hold a town hall with undecided voters on CNN on Wednesday, after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rejected an offer to debate the Democratic nominee for a second time, reports Reuters.Trump will headline a rally Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia with guests Tucker Carlson and Robert F Kennedy Jr, as the race for the White House counts down to less than two weeks.Pennsylvania and Georgia are among seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency. Both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns in those states, trying to persuade the small sliver of voters who are still undecided to back them in the 5 November election.Harris tried and failed to push Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was considered to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News.Reuters reports that Hariss’s televised town hall will take place before a live audience of undecided voters from Pennsylvania in Delaware County, outside Philadelphia.Harris held a marginal 46% to 43% lead over the former president, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.More on this story in a moment, but first, here are the latest updates:

      Surrogates campaigning for Trump and Harris are fanning out across the US this week. Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, will travel to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while Trump’s running mate JD Vance will head to Reno, Nevada on Wednesday.

      UK prime minister Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election. The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.

      Harris herself said she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, in an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. “I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”.

      Harris courted Hispanic voters promoting small business loans for Latino men, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said.

      Trump also pitched to Hispanic voters, holding a morning round table with Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Trump hit familiar talking points but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc. The event concluded with a group of prominent evangelists praying as they stood around Trump with their hands on his shoulders, while he sat with his eyes closed.

      At the same event, the former president hurled a series of personal attacks at his opponent, calling Harris “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”. He was referring to Harris holding no public campaign events on Tuesday, instead recording the two interviews after a busy day of campaigning with Liz Cheney on Monday. At a later rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump continued the invective: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”

      Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally with former president Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, where he slammed Trump’s staged campaign event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a “stunt” and mocked Elon Musk for “jumping around, skipping like a dipshit” before holding another rally in Wisconsin that evening.

      Obama, meanwhile, ridiculed Trump’s boasts on the economy and cast his rambling speeches as a sign of mental deterioration. “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”

      JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorisation of their status while campaigning in Peoria, outside Phoenix, Arizona. Vance urged supporters to “work our rear ends off for the next two weeks” to turn the swing state red.

      Despite some setbacks, Republicans vowed to press ahead in bids to block some overseas ballots. Court rulings rejected Republic National Committee efforts to block some Americans living abroad from voting in North Carolina and Michigan but the party will keep up its aggressive legal campaign.

      Arab Americans slightly favour Trump over Harris, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit along with YouGov, shows a deadlock in Michigan, a key battleground state with a large Arab American population. More

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      ‘There’s vomit on my sweater already!’ Barack Obama raps Eminem’s Lose Yourself at Detroit rally

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      Barack Obama rapped Eminem’s signature hit Lose Yourself to a crowd in Detroit during a campaign rally for Kamala Harris.He was preceded by Eminem himself, who told the crowd in his home city: “It’s important to use your voice, I’m encouraging everyone to get out and vote, please … I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of what people will do if you make your opinion known. I think vice-president Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld.”Obama opened his ensuing speech by saying: “I gotta say, I have done a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem,” before segueing into Lose Yourself’s opening lines: “I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting …”He joked that he thought Eminem would be performing and he would be a guest star, adding: “Love me some Eminem.”The former president is an avowed music fan, sharing his favourite songs twice a year in official posts on his social media. Summer 2024’s selections included songs by contemporary pop names such as Beyoncé, Tyla and Rema alongside older tracks by Nick Drake, the Supremes and cosmic jazz musician Pharoah Sanders.Obama went on to excoriate Donald Trump in his speech, recalling how Trump expressed doubt about the election results in 2020. “Because Donald Trump was willing to spread lies about voter fraud in Michigan, protesters came down, banged on the windows, shouting, ‘Let us in. Stop the count.’ Poll workers inside being intimidated … all because Donald Trump couldn’t accept losing … there is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself.”He questioned Trump’s mental fitness for the role of president, saying: “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this. But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”He also made reference to Trump’s stunt earlier this week, where he worked in a McDonald’s kitchen and drive-thru counter that was closed to the public. Harris, he said, “worked at McDonald’s when in college to pay her expenses. She did not pretend to work at McDonald’s when it was closed.”Tim Walz, also speaking at the rally, decried the stunt as “cosplaying … Fake orders for fake customers”. He also appealed to freedom of speech, saying Trump was “talking about sending the military against people who don’t support him. He’s naming names.” More

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      Is it wrong for Elon Musk to offer voters $1m a day to get Trump elected? That’s a tough one | Marina Hyde

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      For a guy who has spent his entire life making “I am very rich” the keystone of his personal brand, there is something quite poignant about watching Donald Trump get financially cucked by Elon Musk on stage every night. Musk is much younger, much richer, and has had a much more successful series of hair transplants. But needs must, it seems.As you might be aware, Musk has recently decided to update the tired dystopian fiction trope in which impoverished citizens are forced to compete in deadly gameshows where the winner gets a life-changingly glittering prize, and the losers are killed for sport. In Elon’s rebooted version, the richest man in the world is giving struggling voters the chance to win a million dollars if they sign a “petition” in favour of free speech and the right to bear arms.You get $47 (£36) just for signing up – $100 in Pennsylvania, for some reason! – and only registered voters can apply. As long as they leave their names – and addresses, for some reason! – they’re all good to enter the lottery pit. Also, it’s not fictional but real, and it’s happening in swing states every single day from now until the election in two weeks’ time. On Saturday, Musk presented his first state-of-the-art cardboard cheque for $1m to a man at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. On Sunday, it was the turn of a woman at a town hall in Pittsburgh. On Monday, his Pac (political action committee) launched a drive against election interference, because hey – above all, he’s an ironist.Like so many of the previous new lows of this campaign, once this tactic manifests itself you immediately find yourself thinking: of course. Of course, of course. Of course Musk, 53, would become a dark mirror version of MrBeast, and use the YouTube giveaway playbook to go viral in the election endgame. It’s at once completely shocking, and also an October not-even-a-surprise. Perhaps the only mirthless smile it can raise is when you consider the utter yesteryearing it represents for Hollywood.It felt quaint even at the time, but do recall George Clooney spouting off last year about how indispensable Hollywood could be to political campaigns. “I always just say,” George just said, “look, everybody keeps coming into Hollywood for cash, and they don’t come to us for the one thing we do better than anybody, which is tell stories.” Mm. And yet here we are, with the dark stars of the election bypassing the gold-standard magic of a movie industry everyone can see is in crisis, and taking their inspo from YouTube, which isn’t.Anyway, in scenes also some-way-past familiar: the old good-chap structures of political life are revealed as simply unable to cope with bad chaps who decline to play by the unwritten rules. In fact, even the written rules seem to be in doubt. Is Musk’s stunt legal? Those scrambling to respond to this question are once again falling back on the old “uncharted territory” descriptor. Alas, if you were hoping we could get a couple of cartographers out of bed for this one – like, yesterday? – then prepare for disappointment. What we have instead are leisurely headlines such as “Elon Musk’s pledge for daily $1 million giveaways draw legal questions”.The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, opined on Monday of the giveaways that “I think it’s something that law enforcement could take a look at”. “Could take a look at”, questions being “drawn” – I can’t help feeling the vocabulary choices here indicate the sort of mid-tier to-do list priority that no doubt the relevant cops/jurisprudence professors will get around to solving in a few weeks’ time. No particular reason you’d want to rush this one. Is there?In the meantime, seemingly nightly, we have the world’s richest man on stage in service of Donald Trump. Or will it turn out to be the other way round? Only time will show, but given Musk is being touted for some kind of anti-regulation role at the same time as his businesses are involved in multiple anti-regulation lawsuits … let’s just say this could go either way. In some ways, both parties could use a hand.And yet, neither is an underdog. However many years we are through the looking-glass now, I still boggle at the utter WTF-ery of Trump and Musk being able to present themselves as rank outsiders oppressed by the elites. “One of the challenges we’re having is, how do we get the public to know about this petition because the legacy media won’t report on it,” whined Musk at the weekend, in comments promptly reported by the legacy media. Also: you own a media platform, shithead – please don’t try to “my struggle” this one. Other looking-glass lunacies include Musk’s regular assertions that Kamala Harris will end democracy, which he makes while appearing to buy votes in support of a man who has already sparked one insurrection and has explicitly promised to be “a dictator” on day one of his presidency.They say democracy dies in darkness, but it currently appears to be suffering serious breathing issues under full stage lights. In fact, watching Musk go all-out for Trump, it’s hard not to get ominous circle-of-life vibes, and feel like you’re watching the simultaneous live birth of an American oligarchy. There have been vested interests as long as there has been US politics, of course. But no robber baron of the Gilded Age was ever this relatively rich, or as artlessly open about what – and whom – a relatively tiny amount of money can buy.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

      A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

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      Liz Cheney urges conservatives to back Kamala Harris over abortion

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      Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and longtime opponent of abortion rights, condemned Republican-imposed bans on the procedure and urged conservatives on Monday to support Kamala Harris for president.Cheney was speaking at the first of three joint events with Harris in the suburbs of three swing states aimed at prising moderate Republican voters away from party nominee Donald Trump. She has become the Democrat’s most prominent conservative surrogate and is rumoured to be under consideration for a seat in a potential Harris cabinet.At the first event in Malvern, a Philadelphia suburb, against a blue backdrop that said “a new way forward” and red one that said “country over party”, Cheney suggested that Republican-led states have overreached in restricting abortion since the supreme court’s 2022 Dobbs decision ended it as a constitutional right.“I think there are many of us around the country who have been pro-life, but who have watched what’s going on in our states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need,” said Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman and daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney.“I think this is not an issue that we’re seeing break down across party lines, but I think we’re seeing people come together to say: what has happened to women, when women are facing situations where they can’t get the care they need, where in places like Texas, for example, the attorney general is talking about suing, is suing, to get access to women’s medical records … that’s not sustainable for us as a country and it has to change.”Harris nodded repeatedly and applauded in response. The audience also clapped warmly.It was a striking attempt to build a permission structure for conservatives to back Harris, who has made reproductive freedom a centrepiece of her campaign and vowed to restore the protections of Roe v Wade if authorised by Congress. Cheney, by contrast, has an A rating from Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a group that grades members of Congress based on their anti-abortion credentials.Monday’s three events in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were being held in counties won by Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, had sought to neutralise abortion as an election issue by supporting states’ autonomy and rejecting calls for a national ban.Cheney has vocally opposed Trump since the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and was vice-chair of a congressional committee investigating the attack. Her recent endorsement of Harris fuelled speculation that she could play a part in a future Harris administration.

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      Earlier this month, appearing on the popular daytime talkshow The View, Harris said she would differ from Joe Biden by including a Republican in her cabinet. She was asked by radio host Howard Stern if that might be Cheney but avoided a direct answer. Appointing Cheney would carry considerable political risks given her hawkish foreign policy and her father’s role in instigating the Iraq war.Trump has frequently tried to paint Harris, who is from deep blue California, as a radical liberal but she struck a moderate tone during her appearance with Cheney, who lost her House seat after she co-chaired a congressional committee that investigated the January 6 attack.She promised to “invite good ideas from wherever they come” and “cut red tape,” and she said “there should be a healthy two party system” in the country. “We need to be able to have these good intense debates about issues that are grounded in fact,” she said.“Imagine!” Cheney responded.“Let’s start there!” Harris said as the audience clapped. “Can you believe that’s an applause line?”View image in fullscreenVoters in Chester county, which includes Malvern, narrowly voted for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 but the county was won by Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points in 2016 and Biden by 17 points in 2020.The discussion was chaired by Sarah Longwell, who runs the group Republican Voters Against Trump, and lasted 40 minutes including two questions from the audience.Harris said Trump “has been using the power of the presidency to demean and to divide us” and “people are exhausted with that”. The vice-president added: “People around the world are watching. And sometimes I do fret a bit about whether we as Americans truly understand how important we are to the world.”Cheney praised Harris, saying: “I’m a conservative. I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the constitution. You have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump.”Cheney said she was concerned about allowing a “totally erratic, completely unstable” Trump to run foreign policy. “Our adversaries know that they can play Donald Trump,” she said. “And we cannot afford to take that risk.”But some observers questioned the wisdom of campaigning with Cheney in Michigan, which has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, given her hawkish foreign policy and her father’s role in instigating the Iraq war. Many such voters are now wavering or abstaining because of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the crisis in Gaza.Trump weighed in on Monday, writing on his Truth Social platform: “Arab Voters are very upset that Comrade Kamala Harris, the Worst Vice President in the History of the United States and a Low IQ individual, is campaigning with ‘dumb as a rock’ War Hawk, Liz Cheney, who, like her father, the man that pushed Bush to ridiculously go to War in the Middle East, also wants to go to War with every Muslim Country known to mankind.”More than a hundred former Republican officeholders and officials joined Harris last week in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, not far from where general George Washington led hundreds of troops across the Delaware River to a major victory in the revolutionary war. At a rally there, Cheney told Republican voters that the patriotic choice was to vote for Democrats. More

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      The Guardian view on foreign powers in Sudan: struggling for advantage while civilians starve | Editorial

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      The often denied but obvious involvement of foreign powers in Sudan’s deadly civil war is now firmly in the spotlight. Tens of thousands of people, including many civilians, have been killed since it began last April. Now, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has accused the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) of bombing its ambassador’s residence in Khartoum, causing “extensive damage”. The SAF denied it, claiming that last month’s strike was the work of the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), backed by the UAE.What’s not in doubt is that both sides are committing war crimes and that they are able to do so because foreign governments are supporting them. The ceaseless flow of arms has resulted in a vast, growing humanitarian disaster. Last week, UN-appointed experts accused combatants of using “starvation tactics” against 25 million civilians. Additionally, 10 million people have been displaced, and diseases such as cholera are rapidly spreading amid the world’s largest hunger crisis.While the autumn harvest should somewhat alleviate immediate food shortages for many, the longer-term prognosis is catastrophic. Both factions have targeted volunteers working to feed the hungry, many of whom are former members of the resistance committees that led the pro-democracy protests a few years ago.Wars between would-be strongmen punish and kill the powerless. But there is something especially grotesque about seeing the citizens of Sudan, having seen off a dictator and attempted to transition to civilian government, sacrificed to the cynical interests of outsiders.Though the UAE denies supporting the RSF under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, UN experts have laid out “credible” allegations of arms shipments. The UAE is interested in strategically valuable Red Sea ports and resources from gold to land. Saudi Arabia and Egypt support the SAF, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has also sought closer ties with Iran.All this has been described as “a Middle East war being played out in Africa”. But diplomatic energy is focused on the spiralling Middle East war in the Middle East. When the UAE’s leader, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, visited Mr Biden in Washington recently, Sudan merited just two paragraphs in their lengthy joint statement. Sudan has not always been the priority even when it comes to Sudan. A new paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes that the US never matched rhetorical support for the democratic opening there with adequate strategic planning, engagement or assistance. The Trump administration’s priority was pressuring the transitional government to recognise Israel as it tried to advance its Abraham accords.The latest plans for informal talks to resolve the struggle between the two generals fell through. Having recently launched a counteroffensive to retake Khartoum, Gen Burhan appears in denial about the strength of his hand. A resolution in Sudan seems unlikely unless key external actors – namely the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – reach an agreement. With the US showing no sign of turning up the pressure, the UK government, which leads on the issue at the UN security council, should step up. But so should others. The UAE was dismayed when the US rapper Macklemore pulled out of a concert in Dubai over its role in Sudan. Its keenness to burnish its international standing means that a cultural boycott and protests by sports stars and fans could have real impact.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      ‘I’m not voting for either’: fracking’s return stirs fury in Pennsylvania town whose water turned toxic

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      Fracking has burst back on to the national stage in the US presidential election contest for the must-win swing state of Pennsylvania. But for one town in this state that saw its water become mud-brown, undrinkable and even flammable 15 years ago, the specter of fracking never went away.Residents in Dimock, a rural town of around 1,200 people in north-east Pennsylvania, have been locked in a lengthy battle to remediate their water supply that was ruined in 2009 after the drilling of dozens of wells to access a hotspot called the “Saudi Arabia of gas” found deep underneath their homes.The company behind the drilling, Texas-based Coterra, was barred from the area for years for its role in poisoning the private water wells Dimock relies upon and, in a landmark later move in 2020, was charged with multiple crimes. But it has now been ushered back into the area following a deal struck by the state’s Democratic leadership.The re-starting of drilling around Dimock late last year comes as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris clamor to cast themselves to Pennsylvania voters as supporters of fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, whereby water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground to extract embedded oil and gas.“If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one,” Trump said of Harris, who previously supported a ban, during the duo’s televised debate last month. The former US president has run a barrage of ads in the state accusing Harris of wanting to shut down the fracking industry. But during the same debate, Harris insisted “I will not ban fracking”, with the vice-president boasting of new fracking leases granted during Joe Biden’s administration.This bipartisan embrace of fracking has stirred fury among residents of Dimock whose well water is still riddled by toxins linked to an array of health problems and, most spectacularly, contains so much flammable methane that people have passed out in the shower, wells exploded, and water running from the tap could be set on fire by match, according to official reports and accounts from locals.View image in fullscreen“Sure as hell, I’m not voting for either of those two assholes,” said Ray Kemble, a bearded military veteran and former trucker, as he puffed on a cigar in his home. Reams of documents and photos chronicling the long fight against fracking lay on the table next to Kemble, along with a bottle of his murky tap water, three Sherlock Holmes-style smoking pipes and a briefcase filled with handguns.Shortly after a gas well was drilled a few hundred feet from Kemble’s home, he said his drinking water turned from dark brown to green and finally jet back, with the liquid smelling like he had taken “every household chemical you can think of, dump it into a blender, take two asses of a skunk and put that in there, put it on puree, dump it out, and take a whiff”.“The water is still not fixed,” said Kemble, who blames the loss of most of his teeth to the presence of uranium, along with other contaminants such as copper and arsenic, in his water.“When a politicians’ lips are moving they are lying,” he said. “It’s a fricking nightmare. We are back to square one from before the moratorium came into effect – there’s massive drilling like crazy. I don’t care who you are, rich, poor, or whatever, without water and clean air and clean soil, we’re all freaking dead.”Kemble, a Republican who has printed cards featuring the Gadsen flag snake coiled around a gas well, has found unlikely allies in this saga, with figures such as Yoko Ono and Mark Ruffalo voicing concern for Dimock’s plight. His neighbor Victoria Switzer, a former school teacher turned artist whose paintings adorn a soaring timber-framed home beside a bucolic creek, is a rare liberal in this staunchly conservative county but also shares Kemble’s frustration.View image in fullscreen“I like Kamala, but I was unhappy when she said she wouldn’t ban fracking,” said Switzer, who said her water bubbled “like Alka-Seltzer” after the drilling started. Like Kemble, she now gets bottled water deliveries each week from Coterra.“But then the other guy [Trump] just says, ‘We’ll drill more, we’ll get rid of the regulations’ – so that should scare us. People are held hostage by the fossil-fuel industry here.”Although 1.5 million people across Pennsylvania live within half a mile of oil and gas wells, compressors and processors, not all feel as sharply affected by fracking and to win the state’s crucial 19 electoral votes, according to prevailing political thinking, means not threatening an industry that directly employs around 16,000 people, around 0.5% of all jobs in the state.“Fracking has become a big part of the election but there really isn’t much opposition to it now, it’s become part of life in Pennsylvania,” said Jeff Brauer, a political scientist at Pennsylvania’s Keystone College. “A fracking ban would be very unpopular and Kamala Harris knows she can’t be against fracking if she’s going to win here. She had to clean that up.”View image in fullscreenBut how popular is fracking? Polling shows a complicated picture rather than overwhelming support, with two 2020 surveys showing slightly more Pennsylvania voters want to ban fracking than keep it, while a separate 2022 poll found the reverse. Unusually, Pennsylvania’s constitution enshrines the right to “clean air, pure water and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment”, unlike neighboring New York, which is among a handful of states to ban fracking.“The idea you have to court some fictional rural fracking supporter with Trump signs in their yard is ludicrous,” said Josh Fox, a film-maker and activist whose 2010 documentary Gasland showed people in Dimock and elsewhere holding up jars of muddy brown drinking water and turning their tap water into a roaring flame by lighting it.“Democrats have been foolish to give up the votes of people fighting for their lives. It’s clear they are afraid of the oil and gas industry,” he said. Fox added he will still vote for Harris but that “Democrats have thrown away a chance to tell people in rural Pennsylvania they will fight to protect their children from toxins. It’s a legacy of moral failure going back to Obama.”In Dimock, particular ire is reserved for Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, who in his previous role as state attorney general in 2020 convened a grand jury and charged Coterra, then known as Cabot, prior to a merger, with eight felonies for endangering the town’s drinking water. “There were failures at every level,” Shapiro claimed, pointing to testimony of children in Dimock waking up with severe nosebleeds because of the pollution exposure.View image in fullscreenYet, the denouement of the case in a local courtroom in 2022 unveiled a deal in which all the felony charges were dropped, with Coterra pleading no contest to a single misdemeanor in return for the company agreeing to build a new $16m water pipe for residents. Crucially, on the same day, the state department of environmental protection – which had found Coterra tainted 19 private wells and barred drilling in the Dimock area for more than a decade – allowed the company back into the region.“I was shocked. I was a fan of Shapiro but he betrayed us. He betrayed me,” said Switzer, who took part in a press conference with Shapiro, prior to knowing details of the deal, where she praised the then attorney general.“I wish I could retract that. I would’ve called out that traitor Shapiro if I’d known,” she said. “We walked into a trap that allowed the drilling to restart. I mean, when I heard he was in the mix to be vice-president I almost threw up.”View image in fullscreenA spokesman for Shapiro said he is an “an all-of-the-above energy governor, and he is taking action to invest in affordable and reliable renewable energy while continuing to support the key energy resources that have helped Pennsylvania become the leader it is today”. The settlement with Coterra is “historic”, the spokesman said, and that the governor “will never forget the people of Dimock”. Coterra did not respond to a request for comment.The water line should emerge by the end of 2026, although construction of it, unlike the new drilling, has yet to start. Coterra is not allowed to drill directly in the heart of Dimock but can do so at its edges, and already has three towering well complexes boring 7,000ft down into a section of the Marcellus shale, a thick formation of layered, radioactive rock, which contains about 1.3tn cubic feet of gas worth an estimated $3.9bn.From these wellheads sprout 11 drilling lines, known as laterals, that bend underground horizontally and snake for several miles underneath about 80 Dimock properties, with one running directly under Switzer’s house. “They are cutting up the valley like Swiss cheese,” she said.The rumbling from a new oil pad two miles away keeps Switzer awake at night, as does the hundreds of trucks shuttling the vast cocktail of water, sand and chemicals used in fracking. “I can’t sleep now, so I find it harder to take than I once did,” she said. “We came here to enjoy nature, and this has just torn our lives apart.”View image in fullscreenThis new drilling requires Coterra to monitor local water supplies, plug the older gas wells that dot this rolling landscape and provide water to residents. Still, avoiding further contamination as the drills pierce the water table, via failures in the drill casings or leaks of the substances used to pry open the shale for its gas, cannot be fully assured.“The operations are on a much larger scale now, using millions of gallons more water, so no company can guarantee there will be no further leaks. Once wells are drilled they will leak,” said Anthony Ingraffea, an environmental engineer at Cornell University who has advised affected residents.“The nine square miles of Dimock is a goldmine of natural gas. It’s the most productive in the world,” Ingraffea said. “Coterra will be happy getting hold of that in return for a water pipeline that I don’t think will ever be built. It’s teasingly cruel to do this to people. When you look at people in Dimock, you see pain and uncertainty in their eyes.”View image in fullscreenMuch of the newly drilled gas will be shipped overseas and marketed as a “clean” fuel in a process that, in fact, emits more planet-heating pollution than coal. The fracking itself, which is exempt from certain clean water regulations, will also pose fresh health risks, with studies showing that Pennsylvanians who live near fracking are at heightened risk of childhood lymphoma, asthma, pre-term births and low birth weights.The Environmental Protection Agency, however, only regulates 29 out of more than 1,100 shale gas contaminants potentially found in drinking water, with a 2016 federal report acknowledging that wells in 27 Dimock homes contain unhealthy levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic and copper, with 17 of these homes at risk of exploding because of the build-up of flammable gas.For Kemble, the resumption of drilling is the final straw after years of him and his neighbors suffering cancers he believes is a result of the air and water pollution. Kemble said he has rigged up cameras at his home and fears he could be targeted for his activism.Despite the pressure around being outspoken, Kemble said: “I’m still here … but one of these wells will blow up like Old Faithful in Yellowstone one day. There’s already the constant smell, nosebleeds, headaches. I eat Tylenol like they are candy.”View image in fullscreenKemble, who hauls water from a hydrant to a huge water tank that he then has to filter into his house, recently donated his home to a new research non-profit that will test the property’s water, soil and plants for contamination, to help inform potential new laws. He will soon leave Dimock, his home of 30 years, like others have done before him, because of the water.“This is my final fuck you to everybody, there’s going to be a scientist behind every tree here,” he said. “I’m tired of all the bullshit, all the stories and all the fucking crap. I want the hell out of here.”

      The Guardian receives support for visual climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. The Guardian’s coverage is editorially independent More

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      Monday briefing: The Trump acolytes planning to interfere with November’s election

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      Good morning. With two weeks to go until the US presidential election, the race could hardly be closer. But when you’re next frantically obsessing over the odds, keep in mind: it may not be as simple as who most voters want to see in the Oval Office.If the attempt to subvert the 2020 election was an anti-democratic horror show, its impact was somewhat mitigated by the fact that Donald Trump seemed to be making it up as he went along. This time around, Republicans are a lot more organised in their efforts to influence the outcome – and as the Maga takeover of the GOP has rolled on over the past four years, election denialism has moved from the fringes to become a central tenet of the party.That means the wheels are already in motion for alarming interventions before and after polling day. A case in point over the weekend: Elon Musk’s plan for a daily $1m giveaway to a swing state voter who signs a petition in support of the first and second amendments, which legal experts say could amount to an illegal inducement to register to vote.For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Sam Levine, voting rights reporter for Guardian US, about the nature of the threat – and how worried you should be. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

      NHS | The health secretary, Wes Streeting, is to unveil plans for portable medical records giving every NHS patient all their information stored digitally in one place, despite fears over breaching privacy and creating a target for hackers. The news is part of a major consultation on the government’s plans to transform the NHS from “analogue to digital” over the next decade.

      Middle East | At least 87 people were killed or missing and 40 injured after intense Israeli airstrikes hit the north of the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, hundreds of residents fled their homes in Beirut after what appeared to be an Israeli attack on areas linked to a Hezbollah banking system.

      UK news | Tributes poured in for the Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy after he revealed he had received a terminal cancer diagnosis. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Hoy, who won six golds and one silver medal for Team GB, said doctors had told him he had between two and four years to live.

      Prisons | Fewer women could be sent to jail under a review to be announced by ministers this week that is expected to cut sentences for thousands of criminals. The review is expected to be carried out by the former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke.

      Monarchy | King Charles has been heckled by an Indigenous Australian senator, who called for a treaty and accused the crown of stealing Aboriginal land, as he concluded a speech at Parliament House in Canberra. Lidia Thorpe approached the stage and shouted “This is not your land. You are not my king.”
      In depth: ‘We’re getting to a place where trust in the system is eroded’View image in fullscreenThe crucial backdrop to Republican attempts to game the system: this is a race that could rest on a few thousand votes in a few key states. If the result comes down to a decimal place in Pennsylvania or Michigan, keeping some voters at home or throwing out a few ballots could make all the difference.How serious is the risk that the election will be subverted? “If we’re on a 10-point scale, I’d say it’s about a seven,” Sam Levine said. “It’s short of a total meltdown. But there are some very alarming signs.”The reason it’s a seven and not a 10: “There’s no legal scholar I talk to who doubts that the rightful winner of the election is going to be certified and seated. No court has successfully thrown out an election in the past, and the statutes are very clear.”On the other hand, the memory of 2000’s hanging chads and the heavily conservative composition of the supreme court – as well as the fact that interventions that never make it to the courts could play a significant role – mean there are good reasons to be concerned. “When you look at all of these things together, they make a very toxic stew,” Sam said.Here are some of the ingredients.Trump supporters are taking control of election boardsSince 2020, more than 30 local officials have either refused to certify valid election results or threatened to do so. And while those efforts have ultimately failed so far, they signal a new era of activists seeking control of previously non-partisan bodies. In Georgia, for example, a pro-Trump majority on the state board of elections has attempted to force through dubious new rules including one that would have required the hand counting of results – a procedure that critics say slows down the results, makes them less accurate and creates a false perception of uncertainty – only to see their intervention struck down by a county judge last week.“Before 2020, the vast majority of Americans had no idea these boards existed,” Sam said. And while they are generally required to certify the results, that is likely to be challenged in November. “These local board meetings are now full of [Trump supporters] who get up and scream at the board members if they disagree with them,” he said.A study of boards in eight swing states published last month found there were at least 102 election deniers sitting on state and county boards. The most prominent example was again Georgia, where the 3-2 Trump majority on the state board may have been thwarted by a judge but remains in a key role ahead of what is likely to be a nail-biting race.Republicans are signing up as ‘poll watchers’Election boards are not the only place where Trump supporters have sought to intervene in the process. There has been a parallel effort to get those who were sceptical of the 2020 result to sign up to be poll watchers – who can challenge voters’ eligibility in some states. (See this excellent New Yorker piece for more on how Trump supporters are being primed to intervene.)Sam points to the Election Integrity Network, founded by prominent 2020 election denialist Cleta Mitchell, which claims to have recruited tens of thousands of “election integrity patriots” and holds regular coordinating calls. Meanwhile, Republican national committee chair Michael Whatley claims to have recruited almost 200,000 poll watchers, poll workers, and volunteer lawyers.“That creates a volatile situation,” Sam said. “There have been reports of counties buying panic buttons in case election workers are harassed. But there is no evidence for the claims being made.”Voters have been removed from electoral rolls or asked to prove their citizenshipView image in fullscreenIn Tennessee, the top election official asked 14,000 registered voters, many in areas with large ethnic minority populations, to prove their citizenship. In Alabama, the state tried to remove 3,200 people from the rolls as non-citizens before admitting that 2,000 of them were eligible. And in Texas, the governor, Greg Abbott, claimed that 6,500 non-citizens had been removed from the rolls – when in fact, almost 6,000 of them had simply failed to respond to letters from the state asking for proof.These states are so certain to vote Republican in November that the decisions will not directly impact the result. But, said Sam, “it is part of a misinformation effort – it creates the sense that voting by non-citizens is a major problem, and that if it can happen in Texas, it can happen anywhere”.The non-citizen voting claim also chimes with a debunked conspiracy theory advanced by Elon Musk, among others, that Democrats are quickly making unauthorised immigrants into citizens to tilt key states in their favour. It is also seen as a way to suppress the eligible votes of those who were on the fence about turning up anyway, particularly among immigrant communities.Republicans are preparing to use the court system to challenge resultsReuters counted 130 lawsuits from Republicans relating to the election process this year. Sam describes some of those cases here, ranging from challenges to absentee ballots to more claims of non-citizen votes. As he notes, such cases “can be a particularly powerful forum for spreading misleading information [because] public officials sometimes won’t speak publicly about pending legal matters”, meaning they go unchallenged. And they could be a preview of what follows after the election has concluded.Whereas in 2020, Republican party lawyers had refused to join Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, the party looks very different in 2024. The Republican national committee’s election litigation team is now headed by Christina Bobb, a prominent 2020 election denier who is facing criminal charges over her attempts to subvert the result.One nightmare scenario is a situation like 2000, when the supreme court effectively decided the winner of the election. “On the one hand, in 2020, the supreme court refused to go near a case asking them to invalidate the results,” Sam said. “That is reassuring – I don’t think they’re going to go chasing fringe legal theories despite their ideological leanings.”But even then, it is possible some rightwing justices with form for this sort of thing could issue opinions that might fan the flames of any tensions, Sam said. And the court could have to decide on a more technical, narrow issue with massive ramifications. In that scenario, the outcome is harder to predict – and there will be big questions about the justices’ objectivity given the court’s recent turn to the right.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven if these efforts fail, they fan the flames of denialismAs we’ve seen, many of the manoeuvres outlined above have been struck down by the courts. But even these failures can be a success – because they may be understood by those who denied the 2020 result as further proof that the system is rigged against them. And even as they undertake their own work to subvert the result, Trump and many of his supporters are claiming it is the Harris campaign that is trying to “steal” the election.To his point that he expects the rightful winner to be seated, Sam adds this caveat: “Even if that happens, the damage done by stoking this chaos is very, very significant. We’re getting to a place where trust in the system is eroded, and many people may not accept the result.” If so, the intensity of the misinformation this time around may make January 6 look like a dry run.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      Yes, the above picture of Daisy May Cooper is magnificent. But Rhik Samadder’s spooky interview for Saturday magazine – about her riotous new book detailing her obsession with the paranormal, and, er, the time she tried to have sex with a ghost – gives it a run for its money. Features a decent anecdote about Martin Kemp mistaking the spirit of a 16th-century maid for an extra. Archie

      A symbol of environmental destruction and excess, megayachts are a status symbol for billionaires. For New York Magazine, Charlotte Cowles asked a former stewardess what it’s really like serving the ultra-wealthy on their private floating resorts. Nimo

      Today’s Guardian leader advises Rachel Reeves to abandon the infamous fiscal rules, and offers an alternative approach: publish an overview of the government’s balance sheet and show how ministerial decisions have affected national income instead. Archie

      Ashifa Kassam takes a look at how Gisèle Pelicot, a survivor at the centre of a horrifying mass rape trial that has rocked France, has propelled conversations around sexual violence in countries around the world. Nimo

      Keira Knightley, David Walliams, Meghan Markle, and Keith Richards have something in common that they really shouldn’t: they’re all celebrity children’s authors. Ella Creamer and Lucy Knight hear from their less famous rivals, who are unsurprisingly sick of it. Archie
      SportView image in fullscreenCycling | After the news of Olympic cycling great Sir Chris Hoy’s terminal cancer diagnosis, the Guardian’s cycling columnist William Fotheringham writes that Hoy’s response is typical of “a grounded individual who always seemed to come to a stoical, humble accommodation with the things that life dealt him, good and bad; he is a man of frankly outlandish determination”.Football | Leaked WhatsApp messages from the former Newcastle United minority co-owner Amanda Staveley suggest that Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, was heavily involved in the takeover of the club, it has been reported. The messages also spotlighted the extent of the UK government’s involvement.Football | Curtis Jones’s 51st minute winner was enough to secure a 2-1 victory for Liverpool over Chelsea and return Arne Slot’s side to the top of the Premier League. Earlier on Sunday, Manchester City took a dramatic 2-1 win over bottom side Wolves thanks to John Stones’s injury time header.The front pagesView image in fullscreenTop story in the Guardian print edition today is “Labour wants NHS ‘passports’ for all patients despite privacy fears”. “Reeves is warned changes to IHT will backfire” says the Daily Telegraph – that’s inheritance tax, btw. The Times leads with “Rayner sets up ‘council housing revolution’”, while the Daily Mail covers a “‘Tsunami’ of asbestos deaths in schools”. The Metro says there is an “online con epidemic” with “9 million of us scammed”. The i has “UK air defences unable to cope with missile attack, former ministers warn”. “84% of disabled pensioners will lose winter payment” – the Express says that’s the result of a poll. “Charles: you are the best of us” – the Daily Mirror marks the 25th anniversary of its Pride of Britain awards with a message from the king. The Financial Times leads with “Faltering confidence hinders global recovery despite buoyant economies”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenHow the US border became a toxic issue for voters – podcastOliver Laughland reports from southern Arizona, where the issue of immigrants crossing the border has become a controversial topicCartoon of the day | Edith PritchettView image in fullscreenSign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Edith Pritchett’s cartoons, the best Saturday magazine content and an exclusive look behind the scenesThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenThe Guardian’s new section, The Filter, has a singular mission: to provide readers with help in cutting through the fake reviews, dodgy deals and AI slop that makes up so much of consumer journalism on the web. The latest has experts recommending the fair price for 14 everyday essentials, from wine, to cheddar to running shoes. And if you’re paying more than £4 for a cleaning spray you’re being ripped off.As for the wine, Pierre Mansour, director of wine at the Wine Society, says: “My advice is to spend between £8 and £15, the higher the better. The sweet spot is £12. Compared with a £7 bottle, a £12 bottle gets you four times as much value – a better return on your investment in terms of the wine’s taste, quality and balance.”Bored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

      Quick crossword

      Cryptic crossword

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      in US Politics

      Trump campaigns in battleground Pennsylvania as Harris visits church on birthday – US politics live

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      During the town hall in Pennsylvania, a woman with a tattoo of Donald Trump on her leg asked the former president about his plan to lower taxes for working Americans.Trump accused migrants arriving from Central America of hampering the economy.“We’re not going to let foreign countries come in and steal our businesses, our jobs and everything else,” he said, continuing to make anti-immigrant remarks during his answer.“We want to have people come in, but they have to come in legally. We have to know they love our country,” he added.During an interview on MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation”, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with Reverand Al Sharpton in a one-on-one interview in Atlanta.Harris discussed the death of Yahya Sinwar and the conflict between Israel and Hamas.“We have got to get this war over with. We got to get the hostages out. We need the war to end”, Harris said. “The death of Sinwar I believe has removed an obstacle to that end. And so, we’ve got to work at it and we’ve got to work at it through diplomatic means and that’s what we intend to do.”The Democratic presidential nominee also spoke about the latest polling on support from Black men.“This narrative about what kind of support we are receiving from Black men that is just not panning out in reality,” she said. “I must earn the vote of everyone regardless of their race or gender.”Donald Trump said he’s completed two cognitive tests as opponents have increasingly questioned the 78-year-old Republican presidential nominee’s mental and physical fitness.“I aced the both of them”, Trump said during a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “And the doctor in one case said, ‘I’ve never seen anybody ace them’”.“I’d like to see cognitive tests for anybody running for president or vice president”, Trump added. He later expressed age is but a number, using media mogul Rupert Murdoch as an example.During the town hall in Pennsylvania, a woman with a tattoo of Donald Trump on her leg asked the former president about his plan to lower taxes for working Americans.Trump accused migrants arriving from Central America of hampering the economy.“We’re not going to let foreign countries come in and steal our businesses, our jobs and everything else,” he said, continuing to make anti-immigrant remarks during his answer.“We want to have people come in, but they have to come in legally. We have to know they love our country,” he added.Musk entered the stage at the Roxian Theater in Pittsburgh as the sound system blared “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys.He carried a yellow “terrible towel” of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the city’s beloved NFL team, and jumped up and down as the crowd chanted his name.In a short speech, Musk told attendees, many wearing red Maga hats, that “the constitution is literally under attack” and urged a “clean sweep of those who believe in the constitution” in November.He then issued his second check for a million dollars to a signatory to his petition backing the first and second amendment. Kristine Fishell, who had sat on the balcony level, received the giant novelty check and smiled for the cameras before being whisked away.The event then pivoted to a lengthy town hall, where attendees asked a variety of conspiracy tinged questions and whether Musk would run for president in 2028.He could not, he explained, due to the natural born citizen clause of the US constitution, and did not want the job either. “I hate politics,” Musk said, explaining his purported reason for injecting himself into the 2024 race. “But the stakes are so high.”As the town hall began to wrap up, no attendee had asked whether Donald Trump’s promise to bring Musk, who is worth an estimated $247bn, into government as a “secretary of cost cutting” might be a conflict of interest. He told the crowd he was ready for the position, adding “I’d like to say it’s a hard job, but it’s not”.A few seconds earlier a member of the crowd had shouted “taxation is theft!”.Former ESPN anchor Sage Steele is moderating the town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump is taking questions from the audience.His first question was on whether he would protect social security and Medicare benefits.“Number one, no tax on social security for our seniors, that’s a big deal,” Trump said. “No tax on tips,” he said, and “no tax on overtime.”Former president Donald Trump has started delivering his remarks at an event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.His speech in the Lancaster County Convention Center follows a visit to a local McDonald’s, where he wore an apron and worked the french fries station.We’ll be following his comments as he rallies in the battleground state.The legendary singer Stevie Wonder rallied congregants at a church in Atlanta with a rendition of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song in support of Vice-President Kamala Harris.Wonder performed during a church service and early vote event at Divine Faith Ministries International. He also sang “Happy Birthday” as Harris celebrates her 60th birthday today.The Harris campaign responded to comments made by former president Donald Trump calling Democratic representatives “the enemy from within” during an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday.“Even in his Fox News safe space, Donald Trump cannot help but show himself as the unhinged, angry, unstable man that he is – focused on his own petty grievances and tired playbook of division,” Ammar Moussa, a Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson, wrote in an email.“This is precisely why his handlers are hiding him from major mainstream interviews and refusing to let him debate again. They don’t want the country to see this candidate in decline,” he added.The legality of the America Pac $1m prize draw is unclear, and a justice department spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry.But several legal experts said on Saturday the petition appeared to violate federal election laws that prohibits paying or offering to pay for someone to register to vote or actually vote under title 52 of the US code.According to the justice department’s election crimes manual, for an offer of payment to violate federal election law, it must have been intended to induce or reward the prospective voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.The election crimes manual distinguishes between making it easier for people to vote, such as offering free rides to a polling station, and inducing people to vote, which is unlawful.UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said in his blog that the America Pac $1m prize draw appears to be an illegal scheme because it offered the payments to registered voters.“Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal,” he wrote.At a town hall in Pennsylvania, billionaire Elon Musk has commented on his aims to expedite government agency procedures and his role under Trump’s presidency if he were to be elected.“I will do my best to ensure that that actions are taken that maximize the benefit to the American people,” Musk said. “I don’t know at the end of the day how much influence I’ll have. But I’ll do my best to be as helpful as possible.”“There are actually a huge number of of drugs that are stuck in approval at the FDA that can help people and they’re just stuck in bureaucratic molasses,” Musk said. “Simply expediting drug approval and the FDA, I think, will save millions of lives.”The CEO of Tesla and owner of X, Elon Musk, is speaking at a town hall in Pittsburgh today in support of former President Donald Trump.Musk is in McKees Rocks to promote voter registration and mail-in balloting ahead of the November election and a promise of cash for those who attend.He’s currently taking questions from the audience.Fromer president Donald Trump doubled down on his comments labeling Democrats as “the enemy from within,” this time specifically attacking Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff.During an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News with Howard Kurtz, Trump said that “radical left lunatics… the enemy from within… should be very easily handled, if necessary, by the National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”“These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at ‘Shifty Schiff’ and some of the others, yeah, they are, to me, the enemy from within,” Trump said on Fox News’ “Mediabuzz.”“I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within,” he added. “She was supposed to protect the Capitol.”The former president sparked outrage last week after calling for the US armed forces to be turned against his political adversaries when voters go to the polls at next month’s presidential election.Former president Donald Trump, while working at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, sarcastically congratulated Kamala Harris on her 60th birthday.“Maybe I’ll get her some fries,” Trump said.He also took a moment to boast about his time in office while he was working the fryer at the fast food chain.“We had the best economy ever. We had the strongest borders ever, a military that knocked out ISIS in a few weeks,” he said.Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson accused SpaceX founder Elon Musk of “spreading dangerous disinformation.” The comments come after Musk alleged that “Michigan has more registered voters than eligible citizens.”“Here are the facts,” Benson wrote in a post on X. “There aren’t more voters than citizens in Michigan. There are 7.2 million active registered voters and 7.9 citizens of voting age in our state.”“Don’t feed the trolls,” she added. More